Ameriprise Financial Abney Associates Team: ABCs of financial aid

Ameriprise Financial Abney Associates Team:
ABCs of financial aid
These days, it's hard to talk about college without mentioning financial aid. Yet this
pairing isn't a marriage of love, but one of necessity. In many cases, financial aid may be
the deciding factor in whether your child attends the college of his or her choice or even
attends college at all. That's why it's important to develop a basic understanding of
financial aid before your child applies to college. Without such knowledge, you may have
trouble understanding the process of aid determination, filling out the proper aid
applications, and comparing the financial aid awards that your child receives.
But let's face it. Financial aid information is probably not on anyone's top ten list of
bedtime reading material. It can be an intimidating and confusing topic. There are
different types, different sources, and different formulas for evaluating your child's
eligibility. Here are some of the basics to help you get started.
WHAT IS FINANCIAL AID?
Financial aid is money distributed primarily by the federal government and colleges in
the form of loans, grants, scholarships, or work-study jobs. A student can receive both
federal and college aid.
Grants and scholarships are more favorable than loans because they don't have to be
repaid--they're free money. In a work-study program, your child works for a certain
number of hours per week (either on or off campus) to earn money for college expenses.
Obviously, an ideal financial aid package will contain more grants and scholarships than
loans.
NEED-BASED AID VS. MERIT AID
Financial aid can be further broken down into two categories--need-based aid, which is
based on your child's financial need; and merit aid (Abney Associates Team A financial
advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services, Inc.), which is awarded according to
your child's academic, athletic, musical, or artistic merit.
The majority of financial aid is need-based aid. However, in recent years, merit aid has
been making a comeback as colleges (particularly private colleges) use favorable merit
aid packages to lure the best and brightest students to their campuses, regardless of
their financial need. However, the availability of merit aid tends to fluctuate from year
to year as colleges decide how much of their endowments to spend, as well as which
specific academic and extracurricular programs they want to target.
SOURCES OF MERIT AID
The best place to look for merit aid is at the colleges that your child is applying to. Does
the college offer any grants or scholarships for academic, athletic, musical, or other

abilities? If so, what is the application procedure? College guidebooks and individual
college websites can give you an idea of how much merit aid (as a percentage of a
general student's overall aid package) each college has provided in past years. Financial
Advisory Abney Associates
Besides colleges, a wide variety of private and public companies, associations, and
foundations offer merit scholarships and grants. Many have specific eligibility criteria.
In the past, sifting through the possibilities could be a daunting task. Now, there are
websites where your child can input his or her background, abilities, and interests and
receive (free of charge) a matching list of potential scholarships. Then it's up to your
child to meet the various application deadlines. However, though this avenue is certainly
worth exploring, such research (and subsequent work to complete any applications)
shouldn't come at the expense of researching and applying for the more common needbased
financial aid and/or college merit aid.
SOURCES OF NEED-BASED AID
The main provider of need-based financial aid is the federal government, followed by
colleges. States come in at a distant third. The amount of federal aid available in any
given year depends on the amount that the federal budget appropriates, and this aid is
spread over several different financial aid programs. For colleges, need-based aid comes
from a college's endowment, and policies may differ from year to year, resulting in an
uneven availability of funds. States, like the federal government, must appropriate the
money in their budgets.
The federal government's aid application is known as the FAFSA, which stands for Free
Application for Federal Student Aid. The federal government and colleges use the
FAFSA when federal funds are being distributed (colleges are responsible for
administering certain federal financial aid programs). When colleges distribute their
own financial aid, they use one of two forms. The majority of colleges use the PROFILE
application, created by the College Scholarship Service of Princeton, New Jersey. A
minority of colleges use their own institutional applications. The states may use the
FAFSA or may require their own application. Contact your state's higher education
authority to learn about the state aid programs available and the applications that you'll
need to complete.
The FAFSA is filed as soon after January 1 as possible in the year your child will be
attending college. You must wait until after January 1 because the FAFSA relies on your
tax information from the previous year. The PROFILE (or individual college application)
can usually be filed earlier than the FAFSA. The specific deadline is left up to the
individual college, and you'll need to keep track of it.
HOW IS MY CHILD'S FINANCIAL NEED DETERMINED?
The way your child's financial need is determined depends on which aid application
you're filling out. The FAFSA uses a formula known as the federal methodology; the

PROFILE (or a college's own application) uses a formula known as the institutional
methodology. The general process of aid assessment is called needs analysis.
Under the FAFSA, your current income and assets and your child's current income and
assets are run through a formula. You are allowed certain deductions and allowances
against your income, and you're able to exclude certain assets from consideration. The
result is a figure known as the expected family contribution, or EFC. It's the amount of
money that you'll be expected to contribute to college costs before you are eligible for
aid.
Your EFC remains constant, no matter which college your child applies to. An important
point: Your EFC is not the same as your child's financial need. To calculate your child's
financial need, subtract your EFC from the cost of attendance at your child's college.
Because colleges aren't all the same price, your child's financial need will fluctuate with
the cost of a particular college.
For example, you fill out the FAFSA, and your EFC is calculated to be $5,000. Assuming
that the cost of attendance at College A is $18,000 per year and the cost at College B is
$25,000, your child's financial need is $13,000 at College A and $20,000 at College B.
The PROFILE application (or the college's own application) basically works the same
way. However, the PROFILE generally takes a more thorough look at your income and
assets to determine what you can really afford to pay (for example, the PROFILE looks
at your home equity and retirement assets). In this way, colleges attempt to target those
students with the greatest financial need.
What factors the most in needs analysis? Your current income is the most important
factor, but other criteria play a role, such as your total assets, how many family members
are in college at the same time, and how close you are to retirement age.
HOW DOES FINANCIAL NEED RELATE TO MY CHILD'S FINANCIAL AID
AWARD?
When your child is accepted at a particular college, the college's financial aid
administrator will attempt to create a financial aid package to meet your child's financial
need. Sometime in early spring, your child will receive these financial aid award letters
that detail the specific amount and type of financial aid that each college is offering.
When comparing awards, first check to see if each college is meeting all of your child's
need (colleges aren't obligated to meet all of it). In fact, it's not uncommon for colleges
to meet only a portion of a student's need, a phenomenon known as getting "gapped." If
this happens to you, you'll have to make up the shortfall, in addition to paying your EFC.
College guidebooks can give you an idea of how well individual colleges meet their
students' financial need under the entry "average percentage of need met" or something
similar. Next, look at the loan component of each award and compare actual out-ofpocket
costs. Remember, grants and scholarships don't have to be repaid and so don't
count toward out-of-pocket costs. Again, you would like your child's need met with the

highest percentage of grants, scholarships, and work-study jobs and the least amount of
loans.
If you'd like to lobby a particular school for more aid, tread carefully. A polite letter to
the financial aid administrator followed up by a telephone call is appropriate. Your
chances for getting more aid are best if you can document a change in circumstances
that affects your ability to pay, such as a recent job loss, unusually high medical bills, or
some other unforeseen event. Also, your chances improve if your child has been offered
more aid from a direct competitor college, because colleges generally don't like to lose a
prospective student to a direct competitor.
HOW MUCH SHOULD OUR FAMILY RELY ON FINANCIAL AID?
With all this talk of financial aid, it's easy to assume that it will do most of the heavy
lifting when it comes time to pay the college bills. But the reality is you shouldn't rely too
heavily on financial aid. Although aid can certainly help cover your child's college costs,
student loans make up the largest percentage of the typical aid package, not grants and
scholarships. As a general rule of thumb, plan on student loans covering up to 50
percent of college expenses, grants and scholarships covering up to 15 percent, and
work-study jobs covering a variable amount. But remember, parents and students who
rely mainly on loans to finance college can end up with a considerable debt burden.
Check this out